As is well known, the widespread use of mobile networks has led to a rapid expansion of the services available on such networks, such as services for accessing the Internet to use electronic mail (E-Mail) and/or Web-Browsing tools. In this context, a fundamental need for an operator who provides network services, such as Internet access services, is to verify the characteristics of the network and to dimension it correctly according to users' requirements, for instance in terms of response times. To achieve such aims, operators use, as is well known, either field measurements or simulation tools which, according to the number of apparatus, characteristics of the environment, etc., allow to obtain statistics pertaining to parameters such as:
number of serviced calls;
number of blocked calls; etc.
and to generate tables or graphs representing such parameters.
Simulation tools (simulators), in particular, which as is well known are constituted by program packets (software), also comprise, in some case, emulation tools allowing to represent, in rough fashion, the effects that the results of the simulation induce on users' terminals.
As is well known, however, such emulation tools, being intrinsically associated to the simulators, are preferably not usable to provide punctual, instant by instant representation of ongoing phenomena in the mobile network, such as channel availability, time slot availability, etc. Known emulation tools, being of the software type and dependent on the simulators, have insurmountable limits to real time emulation of phenomena that take place in the network, since:
they preferably depend on the characteristics of the type of Work Station (hardware) that houses the software, in the sense that the speed of the hardware whereon the software programs are installed affects perceptible results;
they preferably depend on the simulator, which is generally of the statistical type, and on the tools used to perform the simulation since the emulation is, in fact, obtained as a byproduct of the simulation.
Therefore, known emulation tools, due to the intrinsic limitations described above, are not able adequately to represent the behavior of the network in real operating conditions and, in particular, are not able to represent on a terminal that is similar to the one actually utilized by the user, the result of operations, for instance, of “Web-Browsing”, taking into account the various parameters that affect, instant by instant, the activity of the network itself.